The European Commission is dedicating €500,000 to find a team that will establish the European Blockchain Observatory and Forum. This expertise hub will focus on blockchain and blockchain tech
The European Commission is dedicating €500,000 to find a team that will establish the European Blockchain Observatory and Forum. This expertise hub will focus on blockchain and blockchain technologies, with responsibility for monitoring developments in the space, identifying existing initiatives, tracking emerging trends, and analyzing what opportunities and risks these technologies could bring to Europe.
"The European Commission wants to carefully look at blockchain developments with the objective of setting the right conditions for the advent of an open, trustworthy, transparent, and EU law compliant data and transactional environment," the tender specifications state.
The selected team will lead this hub for a period of two years. Their mandate includes developing expertise on blockchain initiatives, learning from projects that already exist, and determining what role blockchain should play at the EU level as well as what specific actions might be necessary. They must build an "attractive and transparent forum to engage with stakeholders, facilitate experience sharing," and lead expert and public debate about blockchain by engaging public authorities, regulators, and supervisory agencies.
"The awarded team will contribute to make the EU Blockchain Observatory and Forum an attractive hub for blockchain expertise in Europe," the specifications read.
The forum will identify and develop blockchain use cases with European application, with particular attention to e-identity and e-health applications. The commission imagines the hub investigating what opportunities and conditions exist for developing blockchain applications at the EU level and whether establishing a European blockchain infrastructure might support such use cases and other initiatives serving the broader public interest. The team will work with existing national and local blockchain efforts and look for ways to connect with ongoing proof-of-concept and pilot projects.
The commission will assemble an informal advisory group comprising approximately 10 top-level blockchain experts to provide guidance. The hub will host two major European blockchain conferences. These events will report on blockchain's evolution and the trends developing in the sector, provide international visibility to EU-level initiatives on the world stage, and create a platform enabling discussion and debate about blockchain initiatives and the actions Europe should take. The team will conduct between 12 and 18 workshops designed to facilitate knowledge sharing, link various experimentation efforts together, and shape policy conversations around blockchain's opportunities and risks as well as measures related to it while the technology continues to develop. These workshops will involve participation from regulatory authorities, supervisory bodies, and other government organizations.
